I agree with Digby that all the calls for unity coming from the media and the political class are a cynical attempt to shield the Republicans from a new progressive majority of voters. I enjoy a little partisan rancor, but most people don’t, and I accept that these calls are appealing. But partisanship is a good value. Even though I’m loathe to admit that the Republicans have a function, they at least will function to keep us from being a one-party nation, with all the attendant corruption. (In fact, one of the problems with the BushCo era has largely been that we were functionally a one-party nation, with the Democrats shut out of power, and you can see the corruption that occurred.) I have a really good reason to think that this is all a cynical attempt to save the Republican party, because I’ve been busy today working with this video:
I was working it over for the podcast, and I’m going to talk about the actual sex stuff in the podcast, but I want to draw everyone’s attention to something else that’s going on. Frank Luntz—you know, the conservative genius of focus group testing of language, and therefore the architect of so many nasty, divisive terms the Republicans have put into circulation—is talking a lot about how this survey was conducted in the interest of unity. This tells me a few things, not the least of which is that save-the-party-by-talking-unity is something Luntz is pushing really hard.
But what’s additionally interest is that Luntz thinks we can find the common ground in the bedroom. Actually, if you watch the video, his ideas aren’t all that offensive. He’s basically arguing that while Republicans might be slightly more conservative on average than Democrats about their personal sexual behavior, the gap between the two is small enough to be inconsequential. But where I found myself agreeing with him is that he argues that the gap is small because people across the political parties are pretty liberal in their sexual behavior. The prevailing Republican attitudes under the Bush administration about sex—that it’s dirty and wrong and you should only do it when you’re married and birth control and abortion and changing partners are terrible and experimentation is wrong, etc.—are not actually shared in any significant way by workaday voting Republicans. Colmes has the survey up; you can check out for yourself.
I don’t think Luntz pulled this issue to focus on out of a hat. I think he set out to establish that Democrats and Republicans are mostly the same when it comes to sex in order to lay the divisiveness on this issue to rest, because he thinks that it’s hurting the Republican party. The Republicans have pandered to the anti-choice right since the late 70s, but that strategy is losing its effectiveness for a number of reasons. One, which Luntz touches on here, is that liberals are basically winning by attrition on sex positivity. It’s a slow battle uphill (and unfortunately there’s still a lot of sexism despite permissiveness), but the notion that it’s somehow more noble to be repressed and button-up is increasingly a minority position. People are far more likely, conservative and liberal both, to worry that they aren’t expressing their sexuality enough. Republican housewives are having sex toy parties. An increasing number of Republicans are agreeing with the arguments in favor of gay rights. My largely Republican family is very supportive of my reproductive rights activism, and I don’t think their pro-choice politics are all that uncommon in the party.
The sexphobia has worked for a long time for a couple of reasons. While Republicans share a lot of liberal values about sex, they are largely unwilling to resist the anti-choice nuts on these issues, because speaking up in favor of sexual freedom is embarrassing. I suspect a lot of pro-choice Republicans tend to think that the politicians they support are just pandering to the crazies with the anti-sex stuff, and nothing but words would come of it, and so the pandering was a small sacrifice to make to get enough votes to hold onto power. The anti-choice right was basically treated like useful idiots for a long time, in other words. But under the Bush administration, two things happened. One was that the anti-choicers started to see real victories—abstinence-only education, severe restrictions on abortion, a SCOTUS decision that lays the groundwork for an overturn of Roe v Wade, the delay of Plan B being sold over the counter. The other part of this was that the religious right started to demand more power in exchange for their support—witness the run of Huckabee.
What all this did was make them more visible, and frankly, they’re an embarrassment. And Republicans are losing voters on the religious right issue—people don’t want to be associated with them. Kansas has a Democratic governor in no small part because the old school economic conservatives were tired of voting for people who sniff your daughter’s panties and want to teach your kids that people were made of mud and rib bones. South Dakota saw the attempt to ban abortion beaten at the polls. Luntz sees the writing on the wall. It’s time to distance yourself from the religious freaks, or else they’re going to take over and you’ll be bleeding voters. So while Huckabee pulls a last stand maneuver in the primaries, Luntz is running to Playboy to beg for some sex-positive credibility.
Personally, I feel a bit outside of all this. The Republicans might be willing to embrace condoms, porn, and blow jobs, but I’m working on a more radical project, to move people towards not just a freer view of sex, but a more egalitarian one, a world where women aren’t just holes to be fucked, but real people whose humanity counts. Sex positivity is part of that, but we need more than that. But I do find it interesting to see that this issue is the one where some of the “unity” energy is being focused. I’m not sure how well that’s going to work, though. The bleeding out of Republicans is also due to the war and economy, and there’s no quick-fix unity room on that.
33 Responses to “Unity between the sheets”
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At the end of the day we are ALL holes to be fucked. Some of us want to be fucked in said holes, by certain people under certain circumstances, some of us want to “fuck” holes. Outward appearance of masculinity or femininity doesn’t really mean that much. It is only “wrong” where it is not consensual.
“The Republicans might be willing to embrace condoms, porn, and blow jobs, but I’m working on a more radical project, to move people towards not just a freer view of sex, but a more egalitarian one, a world where women aren’t just holes to be fucked, but real people whose humanity counts. Sex positivity is part of that, but we need more than that.”
I think that the broader trend here is that the political center of gravity is shifting in favor of such positions. The Republicans are realizing they have to move along with the tide. It’s just like the Democrats embracing “conservative” rhetoric on taxes and “family values” in the previous era. Permissiveness on the Republican side of the scale frees activists up to push for egalitarianism on the other side..
It’s an interesting trend. It’s not completely uncommon for the parties to basically come together on issues. In the mid-century, Republicans were kind of toothless to attack FDR economic liberalism, though it apparently is the driving issue, because the one thing that has been steady with Republicans for a long fucking time is association with the interests of the fiscal elite.
That video is SO awkward to watch. Ouch.
Yeah, it’s also interesting to note that public forgetfulness plays a role in such shifts as well. Once the middle class was established in large part thanks to New Deal liberalism, the Republicans started to appeal to them with what essentially amounted to subsidized affluence. SUV’s, two car garages, rural suburban lilly white neighborhoods, etc. all backed by tax cuts, artificially low interest rates, etc. Now that the comfortable middle class lifestyle is growing increasingly distant for many, the Democrats gain more sympathy. I think the same trend can be seen with reproductive rights. I think there are a lot of women who have taken these things for granted, and are now starting to wake up due to Republican excess.
Agreed. I can think of a couple women right offhand who would probably lean Republican if it weren’t for the excesses. Republicans do very well with the talk about small government and staying out of people’s business, and when they refuse to live up to that standard when it comes to sex, they’re going to lose people. I’m of two minds on this issue. On one hand, it’s good to have pro-choice Republicans going to bat for us on this issue. On the other hand, it would be nice to see Republicans implode on this, and take their horrible economic views with them.
I don’t believe him for a minute. If he can get rank-and-file republicans (and a certain set of conservative-leaning democrats) to believe that their party really isn’t that far out of the mainstream, it will buy him and his ilk continued access to power. But the wingnut base is still there (and the republicans are even less likely to survive without that base than without a few sexually moderate authoritarians and propertarians).
But they’d have to un-appoint a crapload of judges who are going to be overruling abortion and sexual-privacy rights along with the rights of individuals against government or employers and vendors. So I can see Luntz shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Yeah, we’re all tolerant and permissive, we had no idea these guys we gave lifetime jobs deciding the meaning of the constitution would turn out to be extreme…”
Hey, it’s a picture of Wonder Woman if she ever posed for Playboy.
Yes, but JFK is dead, and Martin Sheen isn’t the real President.
Neither is Harrison Ford, more’s the pity.
True enough, paul. Luntz might be trying to revive something that’s already committed hari-kari. But I wouldn’t write them off. Two parties are somewhat close to inevitable in America. I wish we had a multi-party system that made building coalitions more productive, but we don’t.
I have to admit, I’m a little skeptical of sex positivity, just because as someone for whom sex has all the attraction of a cold spam sandwich, I’ve run flat-out afoul of sex-pozzers by simply declining to sit in a hot tub full of total strangers naked. Not a judgmental turn-down, but just a turn-down. And it wasn’t the only time — I’ve had porn magazines quite literally shoved into my face after expressing lack of interest in them, along with sneering comments of, “Whatsamatta, don’t you like women?” Yes, I like women fine. That thing your cramming into my eye socket isn’t a woman, you jackass. It’s a fucking piece of paper. Can’t you tell the difference?
You can say, “Those are just those people, none of the people I know are like that!” all you want, but this is uniformly my experience with supposed sex-pozzers. If you are uninterested or unwilling to screw anything and everything at the drop of a hat, the treatment they dish out is pretty much merciless. All it seems to mean in my experience is that now “liberal” women are free to be as brutal and nasty about women who don’t care to be groped as “liberal” men are.
The right wing seems to believe that sex is a woman’s job, and it’s her cross to bear, so she should just shut up and bear it. Lie back and think of England.
The sex-positive left-wing seems to believe that sex is a woman’s job, and those leather-lined handcuffs are just sooooooooooo liberating!!!!!!!!!! It’s feminist, really!
Neither side is really questioning the definition of “sex” as “something women do for men.” You primp, they ogle. Either Playboy is evil and Satanic, so we’ll sneak peeks at it and then confess tearfully on TV to gain votes, or Playboy is like, oh so liberating, and what do you mean you aren’t just so liberated by pictures of naked airbrushed women? It’s obviously liberating for HER! What are you, a right-wing prude?
And I’m just not buying “But that’s what the sex positive movement is all about!” anymore. When ALL of the proclaimed sex-pozzers I’ve ever encountered are like this, it’s pretty much like the same way I view Republicans — you can tell me all you want that it’s “really” about low taxes and small government, but my bullshit meter’s pegging.
Standing outside of the whole thing as a … well, I suppose the word is “asexual” if you really want to push it, gives me a rather blunt attitude toward it all. If you characterize the sex-poz movement as “lead, follow, or get out of the way,” I’m sort of “get out of the way.” Which seems to just piss everyone right the hell off …
Neither side is really questioning the definition of “sex” as “something women do for men.”
Question: How long have you been reading this blog?
Quite some time now, Tyler. But one blog compared to everyone I’ve ever met IRL and many OTHER blogs, books, and etc. … ? I’m not seeing a balance here.
My older brother is also a “low taxes small government” republican. Doesn’t make the stuff I’ve said about the vast majority of other Repubs I’ve encountered, or my opinion of the movement as a whole, false.
I don’t think this blog is particularly typical of self-described sex-positive blogs.
I’m straight and not asexual, and that tends to be my take on self-described “sex positive” types as well, although I’m trying to teach myself to be less knee-jerk about it.
Yeah, but to be fair, we here here that are sex and woman positive are kind of a minority. That survey about attitudes about teenage sexuality below was sobering. Most American adults, liberal or conservative, rejected the idea that kids could have healthy, loving sexual relationships. The notion that sex is about men using women is pervasive in America.
We are the true radicals. We are the people who see that women can’t really be free without sexual freedom. We’re a small minority. But I was heartened today by the positive feedback I got on the RH Reality Check column. People are willing to really talk about sexual pleasure inside woman-respecting environments. It’s like this dirty secret given a chance to come out.
I think most sex pozzers are too quick to dismiss the way that “sex” is defined as inherently anti-woman. I’m honestly trying to remake sex positivity to be a pro-woman stance here. Which is why I agree that criminalization of prostitution and porn is wrong, but the people who are quick to deny the cruelty to women in these arenas are Pollyannas.
Beefcake Tuesday– either I’ve been busy Tuesdays or we haven’t had them as often lately.
I’ve found it’s best to patiently insist you know your own sexuality, thank you, and you don’t mind them expressing theirs, it just isn’t for you. I have a low drive, don’t find the thought of being non-monogamous appealing, and yet I’ve got friends with a wide variety of sexual interests and activities. Only one of them has ever had trouble understanding my limits, and he’s the married conservative.
The Supreme court won’t matter much if the Republicans vote the idiots off the island. There would be very solid pro-abortion majorities in practically every state legislature, and even perhaps the capacity for a constitutional amendment on that one.
Most of the others are courts backing administrative action; if the administration is acting sanely, the courts are not likely to force it to be insane.
I’m working on a more radical project, to move people towards not just a freer view of sex, but a more egalitarian one, a world where women aren’t just holes to be fucked, but real people whose humanity counts.
Welcome to the second wave.
I know this is probably par for the course in Fox, but is nobody disturbed by Sean Hannity saying, matter-of-factly, that religious people are happier because they are more spiritual? And going unquestioned on this load of shit?
I’m sorry, I know it’s Fox News and all, but that so does NOT fly.
I’m an atheist and I’m more happy than every single religious person I know. Every. Single. One.
Yeah, R.E. Silvera, that bothered me too. I don’t watch Fox ever, but I assumed that’s just how it goes…
Janis: I do feel your pain, because too often Sex Pozz is just a dogwhistle for celebration of the objectification of women, but do you honestly believe that Amanda actually believes that women are just holes to be fucked? Because she’s declared herself to be sex-positive.
Blanket “sex positive”-ism (even blanket progressive “sex pozz”) does have a very obnoxious undercurrent to it. But Feminist Sex Positivism does exist.
R.E. Silvera: Unfortunately, if Sean Hannity were making a bone-headed ignorant statement like that about video games, the reaction would be swift and brutal.
That sometimes works, but not always. I find it hard to take sex-poz slams against straight women who live in (or want to live in) sexually monogamous relationships, even if they aren’t directed at me specifically, because — given the amount of patriarchal crap we’re already fed about how ONLY straight women (and ALL straight women) want sexual monogamy and how we have to “earn” that from ever-resentful straight men, they feel like a pile-on.
It’s extremely stupid and insulting to assume that straight female serial monogamists dislike sex, have an inordinate number of hang-ups about sex, don’t want to please our partners, won’t even consider doing anything kinky, want every sexual encounter to involve rose petals, soft music, twinkling candles and heartfelt professions of eternal devotion (up yours, Dan Savage), get jealous and clingy at the drop of a hat, want everyone else in the world to be straight and sexually monogamous, are politically conservative, etc., etc., etc. But I see exactly those assumptions coming from self-described sex-pozzers all the damn time.
That’s why, with respect to Amanda, I think “sex-positive” (like “slut”) is too tainted a term to apply to people whose primary concern is female sexual autonomy rather than prescribing a certain form of sexual behaviour for everyone (while loudly denying that they’re doing any such thing).
“Quite some time now, Tyler. But one blog compared to everyone I’ve ever met IRL and many OTHER blogs, books, and etc. … ? I’m not seeing a balance here.”
Well, that’s fair. The majoritarian sentiment is something I would agree is anti-woman. I just wasn’t clear on how you were defining” “sides” here. Your statement seemed a bit too broad.
“That survey about attitudes about teenage sexuality below was sobering. Most American adults, liberal or conservative, rejected the idea that kids could have healthy, loving sexual relationships.”
To be fair, most of that probably reflects peer pressure. To use an antiquated phrase, it’s not currently “politically correct” to admit that teen sex can be positive under the right circumstances. That’s an issue you have to bring out into the open, along with the fact that all consensual sex can be positive and rewarding under the right circumstances. You can change a lot of minds once the dark cloud of internalized repression is removed from our culture.
I’ve never seen a sex positive feminist slam straight, monogamous women. Maybe a condescending tone, but even then I’ve only heard that from the “happy hooker” types who assume that your husband/boyfriend is paying for sex from someone else behind your back. Do you maybe have a link? Dan Savage can be sexist, but I guarantee he doesn’t think that all straight, monogamous women are prudes. He publishes letters from straight, monogamous non-prudes all the time. He also tells kinky guys in relationships with women who like it vanilla sometimes that they are obligated to indulge the vanilla sex and like it in exchange for their wives and girlfriends who indulge the kink. He’s not even really hostile to vanilla sex.
I have a problem with the condescending tone in and of itself.
That’s primarily what I mean. I don’t have an exhaustive list of links for it, although I can probably scare some up — basically any comment by Anthony Kennerson will have some element of the “if you don’t want to do what I want to do, you’re an erotophobe” shaming crap, but that’s not the only place to find it. Generally I sense that it’s almost pro forma among certain stripes of sex-pozzers — like, for example, in this post here where, before the blogger can get on with her very intelligent and sensitive dissection of her own relationships, she has to slam married monogamy, not just as something that doesn’t work for a lot of people, but as something that’s inevitably boring and miserable. (Granted, she doesn’t specifically attack women, but again, this occurs in a cultural context wherein every sexist, from religious conservatives to liberal evo-psychos, assumes that sexual monogamy is something straight women extract from unwilling straight men.)
I agree that Dan Savage is generally just fine. However, every so often he’ll come out with something like this (read the last letter and response).
Apologies if this double-posts. I never know what the spaminator is doing over here.
That’s primarily what I mean. I don’t have an exhaustive list of links for it, although I can probably scare some up — basically any comment by Anthony Kennerson will have some element of the “if you don’t want to do what I want to do, you’re an erotophobe” shaming crap, but that’s not the only place to find it. Generally I sense that it’s almost pro forma among certain stripes of sex-pozzers — like, for example, in this post here where, before the blogger can get on with her very intelligent and sensitive dissection of her own relationships, she has to slam married monogamy, not just as something that doesn’t work for a lot of people, but as something that’s inevitably boring and miserable. (Granted, she doesn’t specifically attack women, but again, this occurs in a cultural context wherein every sexist, from religious conservatives to liberal evo-psychos, assumes that sexual monogamy is something straight women extract from unwilling straight men.)
I agree that Dan Savage is generally just fine. However, every so often he’ll come out with something like this (read the last letter and response).
Samantha, (and everybody else who misses it) this blast from the 80s past starring Streisand and three hawt guys (plus one silly pudgy guy with a string of pearls.) is for you.
I wish Dan had reemphasized to the guy that more women are freaks than the letter-writer assumed. But I’m afraid I have to agree that some women probably do like the rose petals and candles silliness. But then again, some men go to porn conventions, which is equally and probably even more pathetic, shallow, and sad.
Yeah, I’ve seen the poly people slam monogamous people. But I don’t know if that’s sexism, since most people who get to the point of being poly have rejected sexism. I suspect they slam monogamy out of defensiveness, so it doesn’t really bother me that much. And since most of them had to go on a journey where they believed in monogamy, because it’s the cultural norm, and moved away from it and so it becomes easy to assume that other people are just as repressed as you were.
I guess I just don’t feel threatened by holier-than-thou kinksters. I always think about Margaret Cho’s routine where she talks about going to an S&M club and just realizes it turns her off because it’s so over-the-top. She has a great line about the overlap between Trekkies and S&M enthusiasts. I think that gets to the heart of it. Kinkiness is a form of geekiness. The costumes, the lingo, all signs of geekiness. I giggle when I hear the word “polyamory”, because the word just screams, “I was a nerd in high school and I’m still totally psyched that people want to have sex with me now.” I utterly sympathize with that point of view, of course. I share it. And I’m pretty geeky myself in a lot of respects. (Dude, blogger? ‘Nuff said.) Nothing against geeks, but 99.9% of geeks with attitude problems is that they feel defensive about their geekiness. If they came to terms with it, they’d probably be a little less hostile to people who are disinterested in their particular geek obsession/kink.
Also explains why Dan Savage is always saying there’s a lot more kinky guys than kinky girls out there. I bet dollars to donuts he’s right on that. There’s also a lot more geeky guys than geeky girls. Women are just under a lot more pressure to squelch certain kinds of interests. But that’s changing.
I think the very first comment on this thread is indicative of how most sex positive people* feel. Whether something is consensual is not the only issue here. I’ve had plenty of consensual sex where my partner did not give a damn about pleasing me in bed. I’ve also had plenty of sex where my partner made only begrudging attempts to get me off. That behavior isn’t illegal, but it’s certainly wrong and completely sex negative. Many liberal, sex “positive” men still think that it’s women’s responsibility to please them in bed with no obligation on their part for reciprocity.
*That is, people who claim to be sex positive. Whether they are what they claim to be is arguable.
I am a sex-positive feminist, and if it wasn’t for Playboy, then I wouldn’t be even in the least bit interested in adventurous sex.
For the record, I’m interested in only the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, which sadly, has already happened for 2008.
Now, as for the Fox report, it was a heap of bullshit coming from Hannity.
Erika: That’s my thought exactly. As for just being a hole — I think sexual objectification is a lovely thing in the right circumstances, but I don’t believe I have ever taken it to that extreme.
Also, it’s not all about holes! For chrissakes. Hello intercourse-specific heteronormativity insert extra $10 word here.
Sure. But there are lots of men with similarly silly ideas about how romantic (not just sexual) relationships are supposed to go — Nice Guyness often involves a fair bit of this. Savage indulges in a bit of back-slapping with Mr. “Real Men Are Not Sweet Or Considerate”, delivers a gratuitous lecture to women in general about votive candles and rose petals on the bed (he brings those subjects up out of nowhere), then lamely concludes that, oh yeah, some women are kinky too. But really if you look at the amount of column space given to each thing, it’s about the back-slapping. Those crazy dames and their Julia Roberts movies! What a racket, am I right?
I don’t think it’s that simple, any more than I think it’s simple for a person raised in a racist society to get to the point of rejecting racism. People who consider themselves anti-racist continue to carry around ideas that they don’t even realise are rooted in racism. I think the same goes for sexism.
The rest of the blog post I linked to specifically talks about poly men who talk equality and enlightenment but really like the idea of having some kind of Hefner-style harem; I also see poly or non-monogamous women who like to one-up women who prefer monogamy (”I’m better at serving men because…”).
As I said, if they were the only ones doing it, it wouldn’t bother me, but they’re not the only ones doing it. Evo-psychos do it (higgamous-hoggamous), MRAs do it (the evil wifely “sex monopoly”), religious conservatives do it (a man’s respect and fidelity has to be earned by perfect premarital ignorance).
All the kinksters I know are pretty geeky, especially the ones who go to S&M parties and the like, but I can deal with that. I can deal with judgmental BDSM-ers, for example, a lot more easily than I can deal with judgmental open relationship types, because their criticisms of my lifestyle don’t intersect with the crap coming at me from multiple other directions.
Fair enough, on the intersections. And it’s probably tempting for a lot of poly people to buy into sexist stuff in order to justify themselves. Because I really do think that’s what they’re doing. They’re rejecting a pretty powerful cultural norm, and that puts you on the defensive. Speaking of Dan Savage, he did have an interesting podcast where he went on the warpath against the very pressures you’re describing, to be poly because if you’re not, then you’re automatically a prude or bougie or something. This woman called in and was very sad about her boyfriend’s behavior, and after talking to her awhile, Dan picked up that she maybe was poly not because she wanted to be, but because she had been shamed into it. I agreed that she didn’t sound like she liked being poly that much. So yeah, that pressure is there. But really, I’d laugh at anyone who suggested I don’t know what I’m missing out on. Changing sex partners kind of sucks for me, since you have to retrain every new guy. I don’t hate it or anything, but I won’t lie—the best sex I’ve ever had has been in monogamous relationships.
Maybe there’s another reason poly people exert guilt trips—they’re trying to grow the pool of potential partners.